Picture : Twitter / ANI
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Krishan Lal Panwar and the saffron party-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma were declared elected for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana, after a high drama over allegations of violations of polling rules that delayed the counting by more than seven hours. For the Congress there was big jolt as Ajay Maken lost by narrow margin.
Out of the two seats one was bagged by BJP other by independent
The counting of votes began past midnight and the results were announced after 2 am on Saturday.
According to Election Commission officials, Congress candidates Ajay Maken did not get enough votes. The party said one of its MLAs cross-voted while the vote of an MLA was declared invalid.
Returning Officer R K Nandal said Panwar got 36 votes, while Sharma got 23 first preference votes and 6.6 transferred from the BJP, taking his tally to 29.6. It was a photo-finish as Maken got 29 votes, but lost on account of no second preference votes.
It’s a matter of happiness for us. I thank all the MLAs for making Krishan Lal Panwar and Kartikeya Sharma win. It’s a victory of democracy. I’m hopeful that both of them will raise the matters related to Haryana’s people in the House, Haryana CM ML Khattar told ANI
